Dark Angel (Anders Knutas 6)

he gave a start.
    Emma Winarve. Johan Berg’s wife. Emma, who had almost been killed in a drama that had played out on Fårö a few years back.
    And now her life was in danger again.

KNUTAS’S MOBILE STARTED ringing the minute he turned it on after they landed in Visby. He and Jacobsson were on their way to baggage reclaim.
    It was Wittberg, reporting on the dramatic events of the past hour. Veronika Hammar had been murdered just as they were boarding the plane in Stockholm. Knutas had to sit down. He felt as if the air had been knocked out of him, but he also felt a growing anger. He had tried in vain to persuade the county police commissioner to continue surveillance for Veronika Hammar, at least till the end of the week. Now it was too late.
    He and Jacobsson took a taxi to police headquarters.
    A crowd of journalists had gathered outside, but Knutas had no comment. He hurried past, promising them a press conference before the night was over. He realized that would be unavoidable.
    The café and surrounding area had been blocked off and the tech guys had gone over everything with a fine-toothed comb. The police had interviewed the neighbours, as well as several witnesses who had seen a man walking away down the street just after the murder was committed.
    The investigative team met in the conference room as soon as Knutas and Jacobsson arrived at the station.
    Wittberg began by describing the course of events.
    ‘Linn Blomgren, the young waitress at the café, gave us a very clear account of what happened. Just after three o’clock, Veronika Hammar came in alone. She’s a regular customer at the café, although she hadn’t been there for a while. She seemed tense and exchanged only a few words with the waitress. She ordered coffee and a piece of cake and then sat down at a table at the back of the café’s garden. The table is almost hidden by a lilac bower. A few minutes later the man turned up, bought coffee and a bottle of Ramlösa, and paid in cash. Then he sat down at Veronika Hammar’s table.
    ‘At that time there were six people in the café – four customers, Linn Blomgren, and a cook who’s in charge of the
smörgåsbord
in the kitchen. The customers were Veronika Hammar and the unidentified man, an elderly man sitting at a table doing a crossword puzzle, and Emma Winarve. The man with the crossword puzzle left the café first. Which means that Emma was the only witness to the crime. When the murder was committed, the cook was busy in the kitchen and Linn had received a phone call and was still talking when the unidentified man passed by her and disappeared. The next instant she heard someone screaming in the café garden. It was Emma, who had discovered that the woman sitting at the other table had collapsed. Linn called an ambulance.’
    ‘What a brazen bastard that man is,’ said Smittenberg. ‘To think he had the guts to do something like that.’
    ‘Ice cold,’ Sohlman agreed. ‘Why does he choose such public places for his murders? Is he the kind of perp who gets off on the risk of being caught?’
    ‘Very possibly,’ said Knutas. ‘Both of these murders certainly point in that direction. He seems to crave attention. But we’ll come back to that later. First I want to have all the facts on the table. What can you tell us, Erik?’
    Sohlman told his colleagues about what had been found at the crime scene.
    ‘The perp succeeded in what was apparently his goal right from the start. Judging from what we know so far, Veronika Hammar died from cyanide poisoning, just like Viktor Algård. The poison was put in a glass of Ramlösa that stood on the table. She died in a matter of minutes. Emma Winarve, who administered CPR, ingested enough of the cyanide gas to make her lose consciousness. She’s in intensive care, in a serious condition. Veronika Hammar’s body has been taken to the morgue, and I’m hoping to have a medical examiner here by this evening. We’ve been having trouble locating one. The man came into the café just a few minutes after Veronika Hammar. They apparently knew each other. Maybe they had agreed to meet there, or else he was following her. Unfortunately, we had called off the police surveillance. And in this instance, Veronika didn’t have much use for the security alarm we had installed at her home,’ he added sarcastically.
    ‘There was no real evidence other than the glass and its contents,’ Sohlman went on. ‘No fingerprints on the Ramlösa bottle